Highlight

The Highlight effect lets you to turn a drawing's area lighter to simulate a light source. For this effect, you will need to create a matte to determine the shape and position of the highlight on another element and so you can blur the edges to create a softer effect. By adjusting the Highlight properties, you can control the type and amount of blur, as well as the colour of the highlight effect.

In the Drawing or Camera view, create a drawing on a new layer that will act as the matte.

In the Timeline view, click the Collapse/Expand button on the effect layer.

1.

Drag and drop the matte layer beside the Matte field.

Display the Highlight properties and adjust the properties to control the type and amount of blur and the colour of the highlight effect.

Highlight Properties

Parameter

Description

Truck Factor

Activated by default, this option readjusts the blur when the elements undergo a change of depth or scale. When disabled, the effect's values will remain unchanged regardless of depth or scale changes. It is recommended that this option be disabled when multiple drawings are composited and attached this effect.

Blur Type

Radial: The edges of the matte are blurred evenly around points that make up the edge of the matte.

Directional: The matte is blurred in the direction you select.

Radius

Enter a value for the size of the blur. The larger the value, the greater the blur effect. The blur radius is affected by the drawing scale and camera position.

Directional Angle

If you selected the Directional Blur type, you can set the direction of the blur by entering a value from 0 to 360 in this field.

0: Blurs the image to the west.

90: Blurs the image to the south.

180: Blurs the image to the east.

270: Blurs the image to the north.

Directional Falloff Rate

The distance where the blur fades from the edge of the image. Select a value between 0 and 1.

0: Makes the blur fade out slowly, distributing the blur evenly from the edge of the character to the farthest edge of the blur.

1: Makes the blur fade out quickly. The blur is heaviest closer to the edge of the image.

Invert Matte

Inverts the matte used to create the tone, shadow, or highlight.

Use Matte/Source Colour

Creates the shadow or tone using the matte shape's colour. Be sure that you are in render mode to see this effect and that your background is NOT white and that you do NOT have a white colour card node attached to the composite. As the matte only gives colour information, but no alpha, the matte is automatically multiplied with the background colours. If there is no colour card attached and the background appears black, you will see the matte colour at full opacity. If it is multiplied with a white background, the colours disappear into the full 255.

Multiplicative

Multiplies the tone or shadow colours with the background.

Colour

RGBA

Enter a value to add or subtract from the colour channels in the drawings or attach these values to function curves.

Colour Swatch

Opens the Colour Picker where you can specify the colour.

Intensity

Lets you set a value to determine the strength of the effect or attach a function to animate the effect.